From the Editors

Shorts from our editorial team

I live a spoiled life, I know that. Every time I complain about some aspect of my work, one of my friends will stop me and say: ‘But you have the best job in the world.’ It’s pretty much true. As I say, probably too frequently, who in their right mind would pay a Glaswegian to drink and then write about his experiences?

One of the perks is getting tasting samples. Not full-size bottles, in case you were planning a raid on Broom Towers, but miniatures. That’s fine; in fact, it’s better.

There are some tasting sessions which are less exciting than others, but even those which are less stimulating will be instructive. Every bottle, every glass will open up some new possibilities, questions, revelations and ways of thinking about this thing called whisky.

Where did the flavours come from, what do they tell me about how it was made and matured, how has time impacted on it and what does it tell me about itself – and about me?

All of this means that I also, occasionally, get access to whiskies I would not otherwise be able to taste or afford. As I said, a spoiled and privileged life, but it bugs me. It bugs me especially when there’s a whisky which is so extraordinary that deserves to be tried by as many people as possible, but which will never be because it is priced at a level beyond the reach of everyone, bar a very few.

Hen’s teeth: Only 74 bottles of Bowmore 1966 50 Year Old are available

I know the arguments: rarity, preciousness, packaging (see Richard Woodard’s piece last week for more on that) and the idea that most consumer goods will have a top end, be that cars, watches, shoes, etc, etc.

I accept that logic and, reluctantly, move on. Most of the time. Sometimes it just nags away at me, not out of some sense of moral outrage, but a thought that sometimes there might just be another way.

It’s been triggered once more by the Bowmore 1966 50 Year Old. Everything about it is amazing: the liquid, the bottle, the box… and the price: £20,000. The price of a car.

Imagine the reaction when you get home from a trip ostensibly to the car showroom and explain to your partner why, instead of dangling a set of keys in front of them, you are clutching a box with a bottle of whisky in it. There again, I suppose the target consumer for this is rarely faced with that either/or dilemma.

One of the reasons for the price is that there are only 74 bottles available, and it was that which got me thinking. If the liquid is so precious, so rare, so fantastic, can you really justify bottling it in the first place? Is there an alternative?

It took me back to Cognac, specifically to the Paradis at Frapin and the large glass bonbonnes of precious liquids, some dating from pre-phylloxera times, which were held there to be used for blending (yes, guys, for blending). They have been retained because they are the treasure of that house, its symbolic core, there to be referred to and used, judiciously, over time. This is common practice in both Cognac and Armagnac.

Paradis found: In Cognac and Armagnac, old, rare spirits are preserved in glass

Why can’t whisky operate in a similar way? This isn’t an argument about whether rare whisky should be blended. Let’s leave that to one side for the time being. This is asking if there is another way to view and utilise precious stocks.

Instead of putting rare whiskies (it could be the 1966, or any other extremely limited, aged whisky) in bottles, why not put it in one glass demijohn and keep it at the distillery?

As a distiller or bottler you can then use it in a myriad of ways, while those visitors who are interested, who are willing to, yes, pay for the privilege can try a sip (and that’s all you need). In that way, more people try it, the pleasure is spread.

It could be used at events globally to show what is possible, to give people the taste of something which seems to defy logic. They gain vital knowledge, you make new converts and generate a hell of a lot more positive PR from the whole exercise. Everyone’s happy.

It can’t be easy to launch a brand, especially into as established a category as Scotch. Full credit to the brave souls who try. They are braver than I.

For it to succeed, or even just be noticed, it has to have a point of difference and, because the market is cluttered, as a brand owner you might just have to shout that little bit harder to get yourself noticed.

Or you make something with high quality that offers a new spin on flavour. The latter is time-consuming as it involves more explanation and hand-selling. The former is, maybe, easier.

Behave like a paparazzi photographer trying to get a shot of a celeb. Shout out something rude, get them to turn their head, get the money shot. Success.

In whisky, that option involves slagging off the industry, calling it ‘clichéd’ and ‘traditional’. You might want to bandy around words around like ‘haggis’ and ‘heather’ and ‘old-fashioned’, and set yourself up as the alternative.

I’ve been doing this gig for three decades now (and on days like this I sometimes wonder why I still bother), and I know that every year there will be some ‘innovative’ and ‘unique’ Prince Charming brand launched, and each year the story of its point of difference gets that little bit more desperate.

This week we got another. I won’t mention the brand, that would be… rude. It, apparently, takes Scotch back to its ‘rebellious history’, so cue mentions of ‘renegades’, ‘rebels’, and ‘outlaws’.

Crowded market: Newcomers to Scotch sometimes have to shout to make themselves heard

The underlying idea is that, if you drink this, you too are part of this wilder, more dangerous world, which is where Scotch has to be. It’s a brand which has to be (cue today’s marketing agency buzzword) ‘disruptive’.

It’s a brand which pays homage to illicit distillers of the past, or rather the ‘independent and unorthodox distillers of the 18th century’. It cocks a snook at the stuffy industry which, according to the brand owner, has closed off the category to new drinkers, making Scotch a spirit only enjoyed by those with ‘an encyclopaedic knowledge and level of superiority’.

It goes on: ‘But rewind time, and whisky wasn’t at all like that. It was enjoyed by all, from all walks of life. In fact, it was quite rebellious.’

There’s some truth in that. Whisky has suffered from being seen as a club for men of a certain age, drinking drams of a certain type, in a specific setting, in a certain way.

The key word is ‘has’. In the past decade, whisky has consciously moved itself away from that isolationist position and become inclusive: look at the bars, the cocktails; look at the new generation of drinkers of all sexes; look at the new distilleries.

Yes, Scotch has to guard against being elitist, but this brand’s view of the category isn’t one I encounter when I go around the world. So either they have new information, or it’s simply marketing bullshit.

But hey… what of the whisky? Well, the premise behind the brand is that whisky was so much better in the 18th century, when moonshiners hid in the hills beside clear Highland burns and crafted their often smoky, high-quality spirit. Funny how brands which purport to be against marketing clichés employ them so heavily.

The reality was that the bulk of those distillers were being harried by gaugers and at the mercy of often violent smuggling gangs. They were more like the coca farmers in Colombia, in thrall to drugs cartels.

The illicit era wasn’t a time of relaxed, quality-oriented distillation. Moonshining was forced upon people because of economic and cultural oppression.

Tough times: Scotch’s illicit past was nowhere near as romantic as some would have you believe

Ok, maybe I just take a different interpretation of history, so what of this liquid which pays homage to the renegade spirit? Is it, too, made in a heather hut in the hills? Does it carry with it the contraband goût?

No. It’s a blended malt. Made at modern distilleries and therefore sourced from the allegedly unfeeling, monolithic firms which brands like this oppose.

It, apparently, is the colour of antique brass, smells of peat, honeysuckle, boiled sweets, apricots and leather books. It’s clearly been aged for a decent period in good-quality casks, just like illicit 18th-century whisky. Aye, right pal.

In saying that illicit whisky was better than what is made today, the brand owner is insulting the men and women of today’s industry and, weirdly, the very firms with which he needs to work to get the juice to continue his ‘renegade’ quest.

He’s thumbing his nose at the people who he should be asking for help. He is – and this is quite some feat – shitting on his own doorstep, standing in it and then shooting himself in the foot.

Yes, we should always challenge orthodoxy, and always look for valid ways to broaden whisky’s remit and the discussion around it. We should never be complacent, but we should also always have our bullshit detectors switched on.

This isn’t a different path for whisky. It’s not innovative or dangerous. It’s a blended malt with a marketing spin attached.

If its owner genuinely wishes to challenge the thinking surrounding Scotch, then there are options open, but that necessitates deep thinking about distillation, liquid, a knowledge of history and an understanding of the way the market could develop.

So there I was, sitting at a table outside a bar in Xiamen thinking how strangely like Miami it was, when Ariel Miao said: ‘We have a saying in China that when something grows really fast it has been injected with chicken blood.’ I must have looked surprised as she quickly added: ‘I don’t mean we really inject chicken blood into our veins’, which was a relief. While I didn’t really think that it was an actual practice, it is always good to have these things confirmed.

We had stopped for a breather before the night’s dinner at the Meridien which would see top-end malts, amazing food and continual toasting, similar to what had happened the night before, and the night before that, and which would continue in the same manner deep into the following week. If you cut me it wouldn’t be chicken blood which flowed out, but whisky.

Her analogy was spot on. Two days before, at Diageo’s now annual Whisky Summit in Guangzhou, Jim Beveridge had leaned across to me. ‘Do you get the impression that this is about to explode?’ he’d asked. I’d nodded in agreement. There was a feeling in the room that went beyond the usual bullish predictions for the year ahead and rallying calls to the troops. A sense that Scotch was indeed on the verge of doing something remarkable in mainland China, and that the predictions weren’t a self-deluding fantasy but a realistic (indeed sober) reflection of a new reality.

Scotch bubble: China’s thirst for single malt is only just starting to grow

China has long been seen as the great prize for Scotch, yet it’s a market which has remained tantalisingly hard to crack. It’s almost been as if the scale of the task has made firms freeze in the headlights. How could they penetrate such a huge market without just throwing money into a huge hole and discounting heavily simply to get a foothold?

To give you an idea of the potential rewards, Diageo’s aim to grow whisky to more than 50% of the imported spirit market would deliver RNB5bn (£500m) to Scotch. If that sounds ambitious then chew on this next figure for a second. The total spirits market in China is worth RNB510bn, with baijiu accounting for 98% of the sales. Seen in that light, a 50% share of the 2% international spirits sector seems almost modest.

It’s been tried before and stymied by distribution issues, anti-corruption purges, and a clampdown on entertaining, but whisky firms’ strategies are changing and the battle for palates and minds has taken a different turn. While there’s been regular talk of the scale of the consumption of high-end (and high-aged) whiskies, there is increasing evidence that this isn’t being driven by a desire to show off but because people genuinely like the taste.

The Scotch being bought at auction, and the single casks being snapped up, aren’t being stashed away or flipped, but are being consumed and enjoyed at home and also in whisky bars, 300 of which opened in the last year alone. There is, in other words, a rapidly growing connoisseurship.

The new Chinese market isn’t being built on the back of blends as was predicted, but on single malts, and the demographics are in its favour. The country’s young, growing and increasingly affluent middle classes are finding that malts reflect their aspirational lifestyles. To grow, Scotch has to educate rather than sell cheap.

Whisky experience: Xiamen's new Whisky Boutique teaches consumers about both blends and malts

I’d spent the afternoon talking to whisky bloggers at Xiamen’s new Whisky Boutique, an elegant Diageo-backed store which manages to balance retail space – and a wide selection of whiskies from all companies – with areas where customers can learn about blending, aroma, malts, and have sit-down tastings. The emphasis isn’t on the hard sell of expensive whiskies, but on education, teaching, and flavour. Two other boutiques have opened in Guangzhou and Shantou with more rolling out nationally in the coming year.

Malts suit the Chinese dim sum mentality, of picking and choosing from a wide range of flavours, and switching between them, rather than sticking with one brand, and with more offerings and China-only releases, it would seem that the menu is getting ever longer.

In fact, the only issue is whether there will be sufficient juice to satisfy the demand as it will be impossible to sustain the growth at the top end. If growth is to be maintained, there has to be a gentle weaning off the lust for extra-aged whiskies and a recalibration of the market by finding new ways of talking about blends. It has to start soon, as the chicken blood is pulsing strongly in the nation’s veins.

It could be the season, the shortening days, or the year’s fast-approaching end which has made the sense of time passing uppermost in my mind. It’s been pushed further forward by the tasting of a number of venerable drams: the G&M Glenlivet which spent a mere 70 years in cask, Loch Lomond’s 50 Year Old, and a Glen Grant distilled in 1949, the latter tasted on my recent trip to Belgium where it sat alongside other aged malts with equally rich stories to tell.

They are exotic, they are often waxy, they speak of rancio. You can, to some extent, analyse the aromas by process: the length of the ferment, the clarity of the wort, the gentleness of distillation, the relaxed nature of their maturation in specific types of cask, but that doesn’t give all of the answers. Chance has played as much of a role in this strange continuum.

Unique journey: Each cask will mature whisky in its own, unpredictable, way

I know that we are meant to think that distillers are canny enough to deliberately lay down casks which will only be broached in half a century’s time. In reality, there is rarely any such intent. More often than not, these are casks which have been forgotten (or half-forgotten) in the back of a warehouse. It was good fortune that they were left alone.

Chance also plays its part in the creation of flavours. The moment when you put a new spirit in a cask is when the second part of its story begins, and it is one which you have less control over. Yes, you can say that this type of wood, combined with this character of spirit left for this length of time should give us something within a flavour spectrum, but the key word for me is ‘should’.

You cannot guarantee what will happen inside the cask. You seal it you put it away and you pray. But without chance there is no creativity. Chance and time gives you the curve ball, the oddities, the element of unpredictability, the ‘flaws’ – but it’s the flaws which make whisky interesting. This is not a spirit which aims for purity, but one which wears time grubbily and proudly on its sleeve. It is scuffed by its passing, as well as being smoothed and refined. It speaks of how air and wood and atmosphere have worked together to impart specific flavours on this one cask. Its neighbour will be different. Chance.

Venerable drams: The line-up tasted by Dave Broom during a recent sojourn at Belgium’s Spirit in the Sky festival

When it works – and there’s no guarantee that it will – the whisky is shifted into a different realm. Any whisky tells a story. The tales these whiskies relate are more akin to legends. I try not to approach them with any more reverence than any other whisky. In fact, I try hard to be impressed. But then you get a dram which has something in its depths which puts you in a different space, one which is almost mythical. The aromas are blurred by age, glossy with the patina of time’s passing. They emerge as if from a different dimension, wreathed in smoke and swathed in velvet, rich with fruits and wax and polish and a mysterious otherness which remains, tantalisingly, beyond our grasp. Sipping them is to enter a hallucinatory realm as the time spent in cask suddenly reveals itself. It speaks of the seasons long gone, the coldness of winter, the funk of autumn soil, warm summers and the freshness, just there. There can be a sense of melancholy, even regret, or defiance against the dying of the light.

They force you to think what has happened in the time spent in the cask, of the lives which have started and those which have ended, of fears and loves, joy and sorrows. You weave your own memories in with them as you enter this dream state watching the endless cycle of life spinning past as the whisky has sat. Maybe some of the shards of the world’s story have been embedded within it. It’s hard to tell. They are less spirits, more temporal missiles. It’s a privilege to try them. We should all try, because it is part of what makes this spirit so special.

‘It's a bit like a washing machine,’ says Lasse Vesterby, opening the lid of the long tank. Right enough, inside there’s a slowly rotating drum with holes in it surrounded by a frothy scum. ‘Actually, we got the idea because in the summer me and my brothers used to hunt mink and…’ he gestures ripping the skin off an animal, ‘… this works a bit like a mink-skinning machine as well.’ None of this could be described as the standard opening of a distillery tour. Well, not for me anyway.

The mink-skinning/washing machine hybrid at Stauning on Denmark’s west coast was the solution to the first problem any distiller faces when trying to work with rye, namely its ability to gelatinise into something akin to wallpaper paste in the mashtun. This was a rather elegant way around that problem and given the quality of the whisky which has resulted, a successful one as well.

I should have been used to the improvisatory aspect of Nordic distilling by then. The day before, Lars Williams had wandered into a clutter of tanks vats, pipes and probes and returned, holding the lid of a pressure cooker with various wires dangling from it. ‘I rigged this up and made it into a vacuum still,’ he says, with a surprising insouciance. ‘You did retreat when you used it for the first time?’ said Nick Strangeway, who was with me on the visit. ‘No, if it went wrong it would’ve imploded,’ Lars pointed out. ‘Actually, I suppose I did step back a little.’ Welcome to the world of empirical distilling, or rather Copenhagen’s Empirical Spirits, of which Lars is the co-founder.

Refshaleøen, on the edgelands of Copenhagen’s docks where Empirical is located, looks like the setting of some Nordic Noir series. It is in fact relatively close to the original Noma restaurant where among many other things, Lars ran the test kitchen.

He jumped ship this year to take his fascination for fermentation to the next step – making spirits – or to be more precise asking, ‘what is distillation?’ and ‘what is a spirit?’. He and the team aren’t making shochu, whisky, gin, or fruit spirits, but liquids which occupy a liminal space between all of those.

The base is made from pearl barley that’s inoculated with koji. Needing more volume Lars has modified a giant butter churn to rotate and steep the barley. ‘We’re just hoping it doesn’t roll off when we get it going,’ he says. I notice that his desk is clear of the potential disaster, sitting on top of the wood-lined former shipping container which is used as the koji ‘sauna’.

If it sounds ramshackle, it’s not. There’s hardcore science behind all of this questioning and adaptation (and creation) of distillation equipment. They’re asking why a spirit has to be strong, why a base spirit has to be neutral, whether you can focus on precise flavours by taking micro cuts from a spirit run and retain the portions you want; whether a distilled kombucha spirit can be used to give an acidic intensity to a fruit spirit. It’s more lab than distillery and as the answers come it’s one which will grow in importance.

The origin story of Stauning is more… earthy. A group of nine friends deciding to make whisky because, well, they liked whisky. Lasse and his brothers came from a family of butchers and so set up Stauning Mark 1 in the old abattoir. As you do. The cold store was used for floor malting, the barley was peated on a barbecue grill in the smokehouse, the grist was minced in a meat grinder, fermentation was in an old pickling vat, distilling took place in two small Portuguese pots fired with wood. And you know what? It worked. They’re engineers, you see. When a challenge arose they found a way around it.

In November 2007 they expanded to an old farm. Therein the barley is malted in two long lanes turned by gently rotating flails which they designed, mashed in the mink-skinning/washing machine combo, fermented in open-top washbacks and distilled in pots of the same shape as the originals, just larger – and still direct fired.

There’s unpeated and peated expressions (using local peat), a remarkable heather-smoked one, and another that’s been aged on an ocean-going schooner. American oak is the normal cask type, but there’s a nod to the local with the use of cherry wine casks for finishing.

Express lane: Stauning’s barley is malted in two long lanes

Now with a thanks to seed money from Diageo's Distil Ventures a new distillery is taking shape, but the approach and equipment will remain the same, just at a larger scale – 900,000lpa larger in fact, coming from 24 pots of the same shape, and still direct fired.

It’s all been a product of improvisation and empirical testing, where flavour was more important than efficiency.

Distillation has always been like this: a constant process of trial and error, and finding solutions. Don’t think for a moment that whisky’s story is a line of gentle improvement. It’s filled with blind alleys and failures, a story of bodging and inspiration, and happy accidents. It’s a fusion of the minds of alchemists, the women who ran the stills in grand houses and farmers making do with what they had. Style emerges from this glorious mess.

What is happening at Stauning and Empirical and numerous other new distilleries is a continuation of this ‘what if?’ impulse which results in new flavours and a progression of spirits’ saga. There is no guidebook, no path that has to be slavishly followed. The element of chance, and inspired improvisation is a thread which has always linked all great spirits.

He was nervous when the cork came out. Nervous in fact that the cork wouldn’t come out or would crumble. After all this was one of the last bottles. Doubly nervous because who can really tell what the contents of an old bottle will be like? Will it be clean or smell like boiled cabbage on a compost heap? Tasting the remnants of a past time will always be educational, but it’s not always necessarily pleasant.

It was first blended in 1854, trademarked in 1877 and sold in Eadie’s 300-strong estate in the Midlands until 1944. This would have been the whisky quaffed by generations of workers on their way home with their wage packets. Who knows what tales were told over glasses in those pubs, or what trouble its ingestion might have caused when the men eventually got back to their houses. But I digress. This was a working man’s tipple now being uncorked in the offices of a whisky investment fund. How strange life is.

Revisiting the past: A bottle of James Eadie’s Trade Mark X tastes not how Broom would expect

The man with the slightly shaky hand was Rupert Patrick, the great-great-grandson of James Eadie. The bottle came from one of the last batches and probably was blended at the start of the Second World War.

Alongside Rupert was Norman Mathison, former master blender at Mackinlays, Tom Bruce-Gardyne of this and many other parishes, and myself. I think we were all nervous.

It was poured. It was dark. It was smoky, really smoky. It was richly Sherried, filled with fruitcake notes. It was balanced and generous and complex. It was mature and seemed malt heavy. It was everything we didn’t expect it to be. The images of the smoke filled pubs of the Midlands, and men belting back whisky for effect suddenly faded.

We think we know what the old days were like, but do we really? As I mentioned in the last rant, we can learn from the past but can never repeat it. It’s not that we just cannot go back, but that we don’t really know what ‘then’ was. Memory is fickle. Summers were always sunny, it always snowed at Christmas, and Partick Thistle won more games than they lost. How devastating it is to find out all of that might not have been true.

Our scent memory is remarkable. We all have a remarkable ability to retain every aroma we have encountered and file it away for future reference, pulling it out when stimulated by the same scent decades later. Smell, we know, is linked to memory, but is memory accurate?

I was thinking about this when we went on a family outing to see Blade Runner 2049. Like the first film, the plot hinges on the nature of memory and consciousness. Replicants have memories implanted, providing them with a backstory, but they are false. It’s this existential crisis which sits at the heart of the film.

Blade Runner: Replicants’ memories are false, but how reliable are our own?

In some ways it’s replicated (pardon the pun) when we smell a whisky. Is that aroma really the same one as in our granny’s house when we were a child? Does it matter if it isn’t? After all, we cannot ever go back to our granny’s house on the day when we encountered that aroma. What we are seeing in our minds is a composite of the aromas in the glass, a hallucination, a dream of place and people, and faces and experiences.

It’s not our granny’s house but a memory of what it might have been like with other details thrown in. We are creating a memory out of everything within the aromas rising from the glass. The complex picture is created by our minds out of a multiplicity of memories which are rearranged in a new context. When tasting we have to decode them.

That is what was happening with Rupert’s whisky. In addition, I was having to deal with a different sort of implanted memory, that one gleaned from books, conversations, and theories about what a pub whisky from the early 20th century would have tasted like.

It had to be light, even though Sherry casks would have been more prevalent, it would have had a young age profile to hit a price point, and used lots of grain; it would be smokier than the blends of today but not heavily peaty because it wasn’t what the ‘English’ palate demanded. The truth about the whisky confounded everything which had been implanted in our minds.

A reality check is always good, but what is real? I think I need a sit down.

Only those with hearts of stone would have failed to celebrate the carefully choreographed announcements of Brora’s, Port Ellen’s and Rosebank’s reopenings.

Hearts of stone, or the belief – as spouted on anti-social media – that nothing Diageo ever does can be praised (Ian Macleod is naturally exempt from this). Damned for closing them, damned for not reopening them, damned when they do.

Those embittered naysayers aside, the news has, rightly, been welcomed. It means jobs, and it means a return of whiskies which were either iconic or became elevated to that status.

The revival of the three sites, I believe, demonstrates the continuing recalibration of an industry whose firms are not all wholly reliant on providing fillings for blends. You can now be a dedicated single malt producer.

This will be a slow readjustment – the volume difference between the two categories is still huge – but, although blends will remain the foundation, there are now clear indications that single malt should be seen as a category operating to its own rules.

Not needed: Port Ellen closed because its spirit wasn’t required for blends

Diageo didn’t decide to reopen its pair because it needed liquid, but because there is a perceived demand for single malt – and single malt of a specific style. It is noticeable that, while the firm has revived two lost plants, it hasn’t gone ahead with the doubling of capacity at Mortlach and Teaninich. It’s optimistic, but cautiously so.

The reopenings are modest – both distilleries will have a maximum capacity of 800,000 litres of pure alcohol (lpa; the same as Oban) – but who is to say that the maximum will be required?

These will be small-scale, profitable units appealing to a changing market and benefiting from an already established reputation. It makes perfect strategic sense, as well as making folk feel all fuzzy and warm.

Rosebank, too, is a canny move from an extremely canny firm which quietly gets on with the job. Ian Macleod doesn’t spend money unless it knows there is a return, and also knows that whisky is about playing the long game.

Both firms have sufficiently long memories to remember why the stills closed in the first place, although the specific reasons might have been slightly different: Brora only reopened the first time because of short-term requirements; Rosebank closed because of effluent issues and location (if it hadn’t been next to a then disused canal, it would have been a Classic Malt); Port Ellen was surplus to requirements when there was a glut of smoky whisky; all fell silent because of the stock surplus of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Canny move: Leonard Russell and Ian Macleod are playing a long game with Rosebank

Distilleries closed at that time because their makes weren’t required for blends and because there wasn’t a single malt market to speak of. Size, style, quality, location – all were taken into consideration when the cull took place.

Now, with a new single malt category, what might we expect in terms of style from the trio? We’ve heard that the set-up in each distillery will be the same in terms of equipment, but do you honestly think either firm won’t also apply the learnings from the intervening years?

Although some may wish it, I don’t see these reopenings creating heritage sites manned by folk in period costume using the same barley type, yeast strains and equipment as in the ‘Good Old Days’ to make a spirit which will then be filled into the same (often exhausted) wood.

These aren’t Sleeping Beauty distilleries, waiting for the kiss of Princes Ivan (Menezes) and Lenny (Russell) to reawaken them so they can continue as they were. You can learn from the positives (and, more importantly, the mistakes) of the past, but you can’t go back (ok, the Cabrach distillery might just do that, which would make it academically fascinating, but hardly a commercial venture in the way that Diageo and Ian Macleod envisage their revived three).

What, then, will the rebooted distilleries be facing when their mature whisky appears on the market in a decade or more’s time? Scotch has got better at reading the cyclical nature of the market, but any aged spirit category is always a hostage to fortune.

Brora’s back: But how will the ‘new’ spirit produced differ from the past?

Having old heads who have seen the worst of times in charge is essential. It is not just about having a product to sell, it is being able to anticipate the needs of the market in five, 10, 15 years’ time.

The trio will emerge with mature stock at (roughly) the same time as another 10 or 12 new distilleries. In recent weeks I’ve been round five of them. All are well set-up. All will make excellent whisky. All (bar one) are 100% single malt-oriented.

The question which needs to be asked now is: how do they cut through against 100 other established malt distilleries, plus their contemporaries? Where’s the point of difference?

The rebooted trio have the advantage of being able to draw on an already established reputation. They, I feel, are in a secure place. The rest? There are many options open to new distillers, but the smartest ones better have started wargaming exercises now. The ones who take the long-term view should prosper.

The single malt category is new. We don’t know how the market will change in the next decade. Will we really see Glenfiddich, The Glenlivet and Macallan all sell in excess of 2m cases a year – and, in Macallan’s case, at a price premium?

I’d be more worried about not getting those sums right than about the relatively small amount of spirit coming from the rebooted trio. Three cheers for them, but wise heads are required if the faith that all of the industry has in the projected single malt boom is to be repaid.

‘There's a bookmark. Read it and bring it with you.’ Such were the instructions. I took it to mean: ‘Open at the bookmarked page because you’ll read from it later on.’ The ‘it’ in question was a volume of WB Yeats’ Collected Poems, and my bookmark lay between pages 116 and 117.

This gave me a choice of four poems. Which one was intended for the recitation? He wishes his Beloved were Dead didn’t seem that likely, neither did He thinks of his Past Greatness…, though it does start: ‘I have drunk ale from the country of the young.’

It might have been The Fiddler of Dooney, which is considerably more upbeat, but I had a hunch that the lines I was apparently expected to quote from were contained in He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, which ends as follows:

‘But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.’

That sounded more like it.

Press trips are like this sometimes. You’re given tasks which fit in with the theme of the event and break the ice. Better than just standing around awkwardly drinking (free) whisky. Hmm. Still, we hacks are probably regarded as being easily bored, and so the event organisers are always thinking up new scenarios which will pique our jaded interests. Spoiled? You bet.

Tread softly: Dreams are very important in whisky-making, says Dave Broom

A chance to taste the full range of Midleton Very Rare (MVR) annual releases would have been sufficient to get me to Cork – and Midleton owner Irish Distillers is noted for always throwing a brilliant bash. The addition of Yeats wasn’t needed, but if it would help the party along I’d be more than happy to cough out a stanza.

With time on my hands, I began to wonder what the subtext of the lines might be. Was it a polite request not to be too harsh on the works of master distillers Barry Crockett and Brian Nation? To go easy on the old whiskies; maybe to take time to think about the creative process, and the thought and care which went into their making? Was this a subtle and polite attempt to melt the cold heart of a cynical critic?

Dreams seemed an appropriate way to talk about the genesis of MVR, which with the benefit of hindsight can be seen as the starting point of Irish whiskey’s reawakening – or, to be more precise, our realisation of it.

It was the whiskey which showed that Ireland could play in the same lofty field as top-end Scotch. It showed what was possible, demonstrated what had been going on behind the gates at New Midleton, illustrated the faith placed in the distillers and blenders by the directors.

The dream was that it could recalibrate people’s thinking of Irish whiskey, show that the country was not ‘an irrelevance’ (in the words of DCL’s William Ross) or a footnote; that it wasn’t a demonstration of the potential hubris which exists within any industry whose success is predicated on the quirks of fashion, and the influence of politics.

Starting point: The creation of Midleton Very Rare began to reawaken Irish whiskey

Any whisky worth its salt starts as a dream. I’d arrived in Midleton fresh (well… less than fresh, to be honest) from three days at The Whisky Show, where I’d talked and listened to whisky people speaking of their visions: the dream of Dan Szor at Cotswolds, those of David Fitt at English Whisky Co; the dreams of the new team at Loch Lomond; while, in masterclasses, those of Shinji Fukuyo and Bill Lumsden were also revealed.

Fukuyo led us halfway into the world of geekdom, with charts of the chemical compounds which arise in maturation, before saying, with a grin: ‘But we don’t bother with all of that. Whisky-making is an art.’

Lumsden’s idea was to discover what might happen if control could be applied to wood selection, and what difference different species might bring to Scotch. The successful manifestation of both dreams hasn’t just given us standalone whiskies, but has benefited both firms’ ranges, in the same way that MVR has shown the breadth of possibilities within Irish whiskey.

That must be what they hoped I took from the poem. Whisky as dream, not as the product of marketing or focus groups, or chemistry, but the product of imagination, a creative weaving together of flavour, texture and aroma.

Of course, I’d misunderstood. The bookmark was the slip of card with my name on it which told me I’d be in Brian Nation’s group for the tasting. There was no reading, no need for the volume in my hand. No-one else had even brought theirs. I slipped it in my pocket. Hey, it’s always good to have some Yeats around. You never know when he’ll come in handy. He already had.

Tread lightly when we taste. Think of the people behind every whisky, and their dreams.

It made a strange gurgling sound, but distiller Nick Franchino continued to palpitate the tube more gently than you would expect a former cage fighter to be able to. The liquid began to spurt (there is no other word, I’m afraid) along the plastic and into the bottle being held by Dan Szor.

The first splashes of the first legal bottle of Cotswolds whisky. Three years and a day after it was laid down. The fact that it was a public occasion might be not that surprising. That it was happening at Whisky Live in Paris (23-24 September), however, did give things a mildly surreal turn, but whisky is nothing if not a global phenomenon.

Glasses were passed around, followed by a slight silence as people nosed. That Man from Del Monte moment. There was no fear needed. This is a great whisky. I could tell that everything was going to be fine when I first tried Cotswolds at the same show – in fact, weirdly, on exactly the same spot – two years previously.

Now it was rounded and not at all prickly, the fruits had a light hint of honeyed ripeness and – despite Szor’s fears that the short time in the small cask they had brought across had taken effect – not wood-dominated. Franchino’s team had done their work well.

New liquid: Szor (left) and Franchino crack a cask to fill one of the first bottles of Cotswolds whisky

It had also proved Szor’s hunch right. One morning he woke up, disillusioned with life (or as disillusioned as you can get when you are in the Cotswolds), thinking about going back to work in London and had a ‘why am I doing this?’ moment.

We all have them. Not all of us then decide to build a distillery, but there again not all of us are at that point looking out at 600 acres of barley waving in a gentle breeze and thinking: ‘Why hasn’t anyone ever made whisky here?’

Now the distillery makes (excellent) gin, with a new genever style recently added, there’s absinthe and apple brandy ‘Cotswoldados’, but whisky is the main business. They also do things their own way – the staff are warned of crucial timings in production by various egg timers scattered about the place – part of its ‘why not?’ charm.

Take barley. It’s all local – which makes sense – and has been Odyssey, but the trials with the almost-forgotten Plumage Archer variety show great promise. It’s all malted close by in Warminster, aged in Jim Swan’s patented STR (shaved toasted recharred) ex-wine casks, first-fill ex-Bourbon, ex-Sherry and in time Calvados and, well, who knows what?

All of that continues another of these themes that seem to weave their way into the loom of whisky these days – that of place. As whisky evolves, so the importance of the local will grow. That could mean ingredients, or wood, or a deeper understanding of roots.

If it is real, it becomes a tangible asset. Location becomes not just a selling-point (and 21st-century whisky makers have to be hard-nosed marketeers, as well as dreamers), but a foundation which helps drive style and quality.

It’s one reason why Szor refuses to say that he is making ‘English whisky’. ‘There is no such thing,’ he argues. ‘We’re making Cotswolds whisky. We are a single distillery. The TOAD (The Oxford Artisan Distillery) is nearby and they are doing things completely differently to us. How can you say we both make the same thing?’

Whisky in England is a world of possibilities. By coincidence, that night I was chatting with Dhavall Ghandi, whisky maker at Lakes distillery, and the same topic came up. He too is taking his own path, one that if it pays off opens up new possibilities in the interface between science and art.

The fact that these conversations were taking place at a show which used to be pretty much the sole preserve of Scotch shows how far we have come in a short period.

In the early days you’d stroll past the rum room and there would be the Parisian equivalent of tumbleweed blowing through. Now it’s dramatically different. There’s as great a selection of Scotch as ever, but there’re as many whiskies of the world – and every stand was equally busy.

I got happily lost in the rum’s gentle embrace, particularly a Marsala cask from Jamaica’s Worthy Park which had the fortified wine’s decadent dark fruits in perfect balance with the punchy Jamaican pot. Strange how more Sherry casks seem to be appearing in rum, just as Scotch seems to be wholeheartedly embracing first-fill Bourbon.

Should Scotch be scared? No. It just needs to be aware and not arrogant in its belief that size means guaranteed success (for it) and failure (for everyone else). It should also be aware that today’s consumer – you guys – might love whisky, but they too are looking beyond Scotch and to other spirits.

After a day’s sipping and spitting it was time for an aperitivo, specifically a Nardini Mezzomezzo – the superb bottled blend of its Rosso and Rabarbaro. But only after a taste of its newly reformulated aged grappas: a softly spicy, cherry-accented seven-year-old, and a 15-year-old which, though dry on the nose, exploded in the mouth with a perfumed, fruity, cigar-tinged elegance. ‘One for whisky lovers,’ said the firm’s ambassador Sharla Ault with a grin. Point taken.

It was a first, I’ll give you that. The ferry docked, some cars bumped up the slipway, followed by some bemused looking tourists, constantly looking over their shoulders. Then the sound of the pipes started.

‘Does this happen every Saturday?’ an American asked me. I was tempted to say, ‘yes, it’s a Raasay tradition that the Skye pipe band marches in step off the ferry to be greeted by the entire population of the island’, but I thought it might be taken as being sarcastic. Honesty is often the best policy. ‘No, it’s a special day,’ I told him. ‘The island’s distillery is being opened. Come along.’

Hebridean welcome: Isle of Raasay distillery opened to the sound of the Skye pipe band (Photo: Scott Mooney)

Any new distillery deserves a celebration. This was different, though, because other than some moonshining taking place in the distant past, Raasay has never had a legal still. The tide of fate which has swept past its shores has carried off its people and brought in the malign influence of absentee landlords and get-rich-quick firms. Finally, it seemed the wind had changed and the current was now pulling this small, friendly, fascinating island into the renaissance of Hebridean whisky making.

Even the weather was behaving. The clouds had gathered late the night, drenching the land. On Skye, the Cuillin ridge was shrouded. As the pipe band arrived, the last spots fell and the skies began to clear. By the time the ribbon had been cut and the islanders, guests, (and still bemused tourists) had walked through the shiny new plant, sipped their Champagne and whisky, the sun was blazing off the gold-cladded entrance.

It was hard not to see it as some sort of blessing, as an affirmation of the people who had stayed on through Raasay’s tribulations and believed in a better life. For, despite all of the setbacks, there is a thread of resilience about the folk living here. They believe in the place and what it could be. Not just making do, but making better.

This distillery, for all its beauty, isn’t there for cosmetic reasons. It is a business, but one which is rooted at the centre of island life. As the afternoon melted into night and then the wee hours, the chat was of how whisky making gave a new focal point for the island.

Sense of place: Raasay’s stillhouse looks out onto the Isle of Skye

Those of us who live outwith a distilling community only see the end result of the work. As a result, we obsess and delight in the finished product and don’t give a second thought to how a distillery interacts with its locality.

Look at it from that perspective and the distillery ceases to be a place where spirit is made, or a note on a balance sheet, and becomes the site which distils the spirit of the place. That’s an important, and significant, difference. Any distillery can have this, but Raasay brought home how the links between whisky and community run deep, of how its existence will ripple out across the island.

The distillery will bring in tourists; in turn they will need to be fed and (well) watered. Some will want to stay and holiday there. That will necessitate a new hospitality infrastructure, and business opportunities. The distillery will, if all goes to plan, also help farmers. Trials are underway with different barley varieties and Bere.

It won’t be plain sailing (if I can extend these watery metaphors further). Isle of Raasay is only one of any other new plants starting up across Scotland and there are robust challenges to be faced. It needs to work out its character, what is its point of difference, how it can cut through in what is a cluttered market, but they are going in with eyes open.

The conversations slow, the ceilidh band packs up, the last Gaelic song is sung in tight harmony, the tears of happiness dry on the cheeks as the sun rises again, lighting up the building, igniting a little flame in the hearts of all who were there. Now the real work starts.